Tag Archive: books

So. This year, I have set out to do lots of things to help further my potential writing career. I have joined a wonderful writing community known as Get Your Words Out over at livejournal with my personal journal. It’s what used to be my writing LJ, but with all things, it’s changed and evolved into something else entirely. I still post writing there; it’s just gotten less frequent than the entries that are far more personal and navel-gazing in nature.

Now, over at GYWO, you could pledge to writing various amounts of words over the course of 2015. The number of words I pledged to complete this year is 500k, and as of today, I am just 400 words over the “target” line. I have written 16.8k words so far, this year. Not bad, right?

Except I have writing goals other than simply spitting out 500k words in a 365 day period.

I want to submit at least three pieces to literary magazines. I want to resume my Amazon Self-Published Erotica biz, Erotica Pen Name included, by writing and publishing at least one piece to sell. Most likely, it would be me playing with the “Vicky and Mordecai” storyline, as I have a part 4 that’s been languishing at “half-finished” for about half a year, now. I want to finish the Second Draft of Gray Morning.

If anyone’s been paying attention — back in December, I was wrapping up the first book of my A New Day trilogy. Yes, trilogy. Because between December 23rd and today, January 12th, I not only decided, yes, I’m shelving One Day at a Time despite not having filled in those last 15kish words, but that there was, in fact, another book that took place after Gray Morning.

I wish I could say I wasn’t surprised. But I was. I mean, I sat here and began writing Gray Morning a few days before January 1st. It’s at approximately 24k words total. I think at about 15k in, I looked up from my screen, my eyes widening and me whispering, “Oh, no,” to myself. Because I realized that there was no way Gray Morning would be a satisfactory ending to the storyline. That there definitely was more storyline to explore, after a certain protagonist’s death.

But I have never seriously thought about plot-related things after Gray Morning either. At the same time, though, the world Jazz and Savin now inhabit has undergone so many changes. It’s not the same that it used to be. They’re not the same that they used to be. I mean, okay, they’re still themselves, and their story is still theirs, but just like me and their world, they evolve, too. They experience growth and change (and they should, if they’re going to be well-rounded characters).

I want 2015 to be a good year. I want it to be the best year. I want to get into a routine, I want to find a way to write for at least an hour every day, so I can try to stay on top of my word counts. I want to set aside larger blocks of time to get caught up when lack of sleep and time inevitably tank the lead I have on my goals at present. I want to finish this damn trilogy and begin editing it and reworking parts and finally know all of the pieces to it.

My best friend thought I might be pushing myself a little too hard when I mentioned that I wanted to finish the 8-10 novel ideas I have in my head at present before I turn 30. I turn 30 in approximately three years. That’s roughly 3-4 novels a year. 3-4 months spent on one novel at a time.

Doable. As long as I can, in fact, write for an hour every day. I also want to work on finding an agent and building my “platform” and getting myself out there.

Who knows. Maybe I’ll be on my way to a publishing contract in another couple of years or so.

I’m still adjusting to the new routine around here, so I don’t always manage to post at night. I did, however, manage to clean up my Erotica Bibliography.

I also wanted to announce that Just as Human is free today. 🙂 I have been doing several promotions but forgot to list them here (d’oh!), but I’m going to try to announce these things when they come up. I have a few more scheduled to start this week and some over the course of the weekend and next week.

I wrote two more sections today of the piece I was working on yesterday. I’m hesitantly titling it Not Always for the time being, but I seem to have lost sight of the theme of the piece once it shifted from new to old material. So I’ll probably spend a great deal of energy tomorrow really fixing the whole thing up and tweaking/expanding sections in order to get it to feel more cohesive.

I did not, however, trigger myself today, which is good, and I’ve managed to write 2k words again today, which is also good. I’ve been trying to incorporate more reading into my routine, so of course I’ve been spending time doing that, too. I haven’t read published novels in a long while, and of course the first one I pick up is On Writing by Stephen King. King gets me, man. He and I write in very similar ways and it gives me hope for myself in the future.

Of course, I can stay that I still do a lot of reading throughout the day, since I would read the LJI entries, my friends’ journal entries, my unpublished writer friends who write better than I do (hi, Sarah!), etc. So I’ve always been reading. But picking up an actual book and finishing it? Haven’t done that in a while. I’ve really done nothing but read short stories for the longest time.

This weekend, I didn’t write much. I finished a chapter to one of my independent novels, Stellar. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about it. I also managed to get Say No More, part three of the Say What You Want series, up on Amazon over the weekend. 🙂

Today, I spent the time working on some challenges for one of my LJ writing communities, writerverse. I kinda burned myself out on smut, I guess. I want to write other things, so I will, and I’m sure I’ll go back to work on something to publish by the end of the week. I’m doing…well, miserably would mean no sales whatsoever. So I’m not doing miserably. 😉

I’ve also been spending more time reading, which is a thing I’ve been neglecting to do. I have so many books I want to read, and always feel like I have no time to actually read them. But I’ve been reading On Writing by Stephen King, because man, I love the guy’s work. I really do. Not to mention the writing lectures I’ve been watching on youtube, as well. I guess I’m kinda retreating a bit into my shell and trying to really apply the things I’m learning and taking in.

This has been one hell of a year, though, in terms of struggles I’ve had to overcome (and am still overcoming). Here’s to hoping I can get this shit off the ground, for real. Because this is what I want to do.

For you trouble, here’s a short nonfiction piece I wrote about some of the events that took place this weekend. The challenge was to write it without any dialogue. 🙂

Like, a lot. The complete and total freedom and control over your work? Yeaaah. I love it.

Granted, I don’t know if I’m going to approach publishing my novels with the self-publishing route, but doing the erotica shorts? Oh yes, I love it. I have two new erotica pieces I submitted to Amazon a few hours ago. One is done publishing, the other isn’t done, yet. I’m anxiously awaiting that email, yes.

If anything, this has taught me that yeah, people are willing to buy my stuff, even if it’s not a lot of people all at once. Quantity over quality, at this point. A few purchases on each book still makes me money, y’know? And that money adds up the more books I have published.

Are the hours of work worth the money I’ve earned so far? Not really. Haven’t made a whole lot, but I have made some, and that’s a start. I’m learning, feeling this whole self-publishing thing out. I may one day decide to go with a more traditional route with my more “serious” work, but with the erotica? Self-publishing really seems to be the way to go.